Nov 11 How You Can Become A Successful Rap Artist In 2019 (Step By Step)

We all have these questions when we either first get started in the industry, or if we have been here for a while without seeing a decent amount of money from our efforts. It can almost seem like an impossible thing to do at times.. But no worries, I will get you going in the right direction.

There are certain key aspects of things you will have to do to become successful Rapping.

Consistency is important, Making plans and sticking to them, learning every single day, and treating your music life like you treat your job life are just some of those keys. We are going to break it down below.

First we are going to need to learn to develop a new way of thinking and viewing the road we are on since we are independent music artists (we are not represented by a label). Labels have two big things that help artists

1) Money for marketing, video work, touring & promo, so you can release 1 album a year, focus only on the music (making and performing it) and they will make that 1 release reach the depths of every part of the world that it should for you.

But since you are unsigned/independent… You get the opportunity to not only make the music and perform it, but you also have to function as your own label.. Well, If you want to actually turn your hobby into a job that you can make a living from.

I personally spend about 10% of my time making music/rapping/recording and 90% of my time actually gets spent marketing the music, learning, and making new relationships in the industry to take my career further.

So, now that we got that out of the way.. Let’s get to the nuggets of this post.

(Get a notebook out and take notes)

"How can you expect a job like salary from something you do not treat like a job?” - Fidem Beats

Pick up a cheap monthly planner from your local store. You are going to need to set aside about 3 hours a day to dedicate to music. If you work a job aside from trapping and/or making music you will have to keep a pretty tight schedule. Also the planner allows you to see how you are accomplishing your tasks/goals 1 by 1.

Here is how I use my planner (Below)

Seems like a bunch of random thoughts but this is how a lot of people accomplish weeks worth of work in just a day or two.

“If an action is not earning you a monetary return, why do you religiously pursue the action repeatedly?”

I get it. The ideal of uploading music to Souncloud, Audiomack, Reverbnation, YouTube, and the other free platforms looks appealing since a lot of major artists also use those platforms, well, except for reverbnation. But the hidden steps they took before getting their music on those platforms is what most Rappers overlook..

Get yourself affiliated with either BMI or ASCAP (Google How To) as a songwriter so you can collect your royalty money from your releases.

Next you are going to set up digital distribution through a company like distrokid.com or landr.com

These are the companies that will get your music in stores like Itunes, Spotify, Google Play, and the other 250+ online retailers.

Every time you release a track through them and get it distributed you will actually make money for every single stream/download instead of just earning views on a view counter that doesn’t look all too amazing when it does not earn you any revenue.

When you release a song through a distribution company.. Something magical happens… They give you this little code called an isrc that is connected to that song throughout all stores. You are going to take that isrc number and affiliate it to your BMI or ASCAP as your work so you will also be collecting royalties for your streams and downloads.

Now we can go to Youtube, Souncloud, and the other free platforms…

Now that you have your isrc linked to your Performing Rights Organization and your tracks that are distributed.. You can now upload all of your music to the free platforms. There is a special tab that is either called “Metadata” or “Advanced” depending on the website you are uploading to. You can link two huge pieces of data to the free sites.

Link your isrc to your upload that applies to that song so you can actually collect royalties from each song through the P.R.O.

Place a link to where people can actually buy your music (Itunes, Google Play) to the place in the metadata options that are for “Buy” or “Download”

Oh, what a feeling it is to make money from what you are passionate about.

Now we have the foundation of what you need to use built. Although you still need to look up a video on YouTube to teach you the “ Importance Of Branding”

Now it is up to you to release at least 1 track a week but hopefully 2 tracks a week. (Every single week, no breaks)

In order to develop a REAL following without spending a lot of money on advertisements (Billboards, Youtube ads, or Google Ads) you will need to have frequent consistent uploads to all of the platforms that we talked about up there.

A rule of thumb is that if you bump into an obstacle that you do not know how to overcome, Simply google or search YouTube “How To (Your Problem)”

I PROMISE YOU that if you follow this guide, word for word.. 365 days from the time you read this, you will be in a completely different place than you are sitting in right now reading this. There is hope, and you can do this, It just takes consistent hard work.